


in my life, i loved them all

by MarmaladeSkies (HazardLights)



Category: The Beatles
Genre: 1950s, Angst, Liverpool, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazardLights/pseuds/MarmaladeSkies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John was fourteen and he knew what happened to boys like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in my life, i loved them all

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything. The characters are my interpretations, I don't know what they are/were really like. This story is for entertainment purposes only, no libel intended.

_“You know that a boy who likes other boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut,”_

_– Crush, Richard Siken_

 

1.

The ginger kid with a small plastic toy car was crying because John told him to close his eyes and then John kissed him. They were both seven and John didn’t know about boys who kissed other boys. All he knew was that the other kid’s lips were red and shiny from sucking on his toys.

John didn’t know then.

He didn’t know a lot of things at seven. He didn’t know what made the record players work, he didn’t know what was underneath girl’s clothes, and he didn’t even know what his own penis could be used for. He certainly didn’t know that a boy who liked kissing other boys was a sinner and a joke and a mental health case and a statistic of violence that went ignored, never to be recorded.

2.

Eleven year old John learned how to make himself feel good.

He learned and then he taught. Sitting with his neighbour on the floor, John opened his friend up to a new kind of pleasure. Every evening after school, they would sit on the floor at John’s and discover new techniques and talk about things they heard from other people.

One day John kissed his neighbour. The boy didn’t say anything, he just looked confused, but it was a betrayed sort of confused and John felt a part of himself break off and crumble.

His neighbour didn’t come back after that and the whole family moved out a few months later. John didn’t know what he did wrong.

3.

John was fourteen and he knew what happened to boys like him.

He found out when he touched his best friend’s thigh under the table and the boy’s mother dragged him out of the house by his ear. He found out when his best friend stopped being his best friend, when the boy’s mother glared at him and whispered to other women.

He found out when his ex-best friend punched him in the nose in front of his new friends and then kissed him on the neck behind the boy’s toilets. He found out when his ex-best friend kicked him in the stomach and then snuck into his room to hold him tight all night. He found out when his ex-best friend spat on him in class and then later shared a shower with him. He found out when his ex-best friend yelled at him in the hallways and then stopped talking to him all together.

He found out when his ex-best friend put a rope around his neck and fell from a tree.

4.

Right before he turned fifteen, John kissed a girl. He wanted to feel that too, that thing that other boys talked about when they kissed girls, the chest rattling stomach fluttering feeling.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

He kissed more girls after that because it seemed easier. Girls didn’t cry or look confused when John kissed them, they didn’t throw looks over their shoulders – they just kissed him. John liked that.

He liked being wanted. He liked being able to touch.

5.

John was in love. He was so sure of it at only fifteen.

He carved their names into trees and their initials into wet cement. He wrote music and poetry and drew pictures because he thought that this was permanent. He had found another like him, someone who didn’t look like he climbed trees or owned a rope.

The other boy was older, he knew where to put his hands and lips and he knew how to make things feel _good_. John enjoyed having his body twisted and bent, he was clay and the older boy was an artist, John hoped that the boy would make him beautiful.

Eventually the boy tossed John to the side, a used puppet with its strings broken. John figured that love was not on the cards for him.

6.

_Paul._

John didn’t know what to do with this one; fifteen year old Paul with his floppy hair and guitar positioned the wrong way round. He was big eyes, pouted lips and nails bitten to skin.

Paul was a year younger than John, but taller. Although, John always knew how to make the people around him look smaller.

They fought a lot, right from the start. Never physical fights though, they always found different ways to hurt each other, better ways. Sharp words came first, but then it was thumbs pressing into hips and teeth biting against skin and fingernails scratching down bare backs.

John was in Paul’s bed smoking a cigarette and Paul was standing naked by the window.

John knew that it wasn’t perfect and that it might never be. He knew it would all fall down around him and it wouldn’t be pretty.

He knew how the story went, how it would end, but he played his part anyway, the tortured hero edging towards his own tragedy.

**Fin.**

**Author's Note:**

> Very heavily inspired by Richard Siken’s poem “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”


End file.
